Commercial buildings – Page 2 – The Cambridge Historical Commission Blog

National Funeral Director and Mortician Recognition Day

Posted on March 11, 2022March 22, 2022 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

Before there were Funeral Directors, there were carpenters, who, after measuring the deceased, made and delivered coffins to the family parlors where funerals took place. As time went by, coffin makers “undertook” for grieving families more of the duties associated with interment. Many became known as “Undertakers.” Although fitting, the term was not a reference to placing he departed six feet under. Because talking about any aspect of death was considered awkward, “undertaker” became a euphemism for those who organized the process. Undertakers soon were advertising as “Funeral Undertakers” with ready-made coffins available.

The term “Funeral Director” emerged after undertakers took on all of the social, health, and legal burdens of death. This included a change in where funerals were held. Rather than continuing the tradition of holding services in personal homes, funeral directors now provided “funeral homes” for these services. The funeral director received the body, embalmed or preserved it, provided the coffin, and arranged for viewing at the funeral home. They wrote obituaries, transported or shipped bodies, and arranged religious services and interment. They even extended their services to renting door wreaths and selling memorial books, gloves, and black armbands.

At the same time, embalming, first used on a mass scale during the Civil War, was becoming increasingly popular, which led to the development of both the profession of undertaker and that of mortician. The U.S. National Funeral Directors Association was founded in 1882, the same year that the first school of “mortuary science” was opened in Cincinnati, Ohio. Eventually, the terms Undertaker and Mortician became interchangeable, although it is interesting to note that no one cared to list themselves as a mortician in the Cambridge City Directory.

Amos P. Rollins was one of those whose career followed the path from carpenter to undertaker. In 1848, he was listed in the City Directory as “carpenter” and in 1850 as “coffin maker” – even though he had been advertising himself as a “funeral undertaker” since 1849.

Interestingly, even though Rollins was an undertaker, in the federal census he consistently listed himself as “carpenter.” He also held the posts of Constable and City Messenger.

Roland Litchfield Jr. was another of those undertakers who started out as a carpenter while simultaneously holding the posts of City Messenger and Superintendent of Lamps. Once he became an undertaker, Litchfield took full advantage of advances in technology, as described in this advertisement the City Directory of 1859 regarding preserving bodies that could be “conveyed hundreds of miles”!

Many in the undertaking profession were also appointed by the Mayor as City Undertakers. As such, they handled arrangements for persons who died unidentified or were considered indigent. By 1852, there were twelve appointees listed in the City Directory, including Amos P. Rollins and Roland Litchfield, Jr.

CASKET OR COFFIN?

Why coffins became referred to as caskets is a little murky. The general consensus seems to be that the magnitude of death during the Civil War is what drove the change in terminology—and the shape of containers for the deceased. The English word “coffin” derives from the French “cofin” which originally meant a basket. The primary difference between coffins and caskets was that early wood coffins had six sides and were hexagonal to accommodate the width of shoulders. Caskets, on the other hand, were and continue to be rectangular.

What about the connection to the Civil War? There are varying views, but most agree that changes in funeral rituals were created in response to the personal and national heartache caused by the unprecedented death toll. People desired more significant ways to pay homage to the deceased. More elaborate coffins— caskets—were part of that impulse. Over time, elaborate caskets were also meant to convey the social standing and wealth of individuals.

William Lockhart, who had emigrated from Nova Scotia to the U.S. at age 16, was yet another carpenter turned coffin maker. By 1885, Lockhart had a large manufactory on Bridge Street in East Cambridge.

Lockhart died in March of 1902, just six months before his new plant was erected on First Street. His brothers carried on the business, until in 1906 the company was absorbed by the National Casket Company, which operated out of the East Cambridge plant for several decades before closing its doors in 1976.

National Casket Co. at 120 First Street, ca. 1968 (Cambridge Historical Commission)

Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox

Sources

“A History of Funerals in the United States.” Frazer Consultants, July 30, 2020. https://web.frazerconsultants.com/2016/07/a-history-of-funerals-in-the-united-states/

Short, Jessica. “A Brief History of Funeral Directors.” Gather. Accessed March 9, 2022. https://blog.gather.app/a-brief-history-of-funeral-directors.

“Funeral Homes and Funeral Practices: Encyclopedia of Cleveland History: Case Western Reserve University.” Encyclopedia of Cleveland History | Case Western Reserve University, May 11, 2018. https://case.edu/ech/articles/f/funeral-homes-and-funeral-practices.

Further Reading

“Morticians: A History.” Accessed March 9, 2022. https://blog.borgwardtfuneralhome.com/morticians-a-history/.

Zahn, Jonas A. “A Brief History of Caskets.” Northwoods Casket Company, September 16, 2021. https://www.northwoodscasket.com/northwoodscasket/2011/03/brief-history-of-caskets.html.

Ice Cutting at Jerry’s Pit

Posted on January 25, 2022January 11, 2022 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

The warm weather in early 2022 made it hard to believe that as late as 1935 commercial quantities of natural ice up to 13” thick were harvested from a disused clay pit in North Cambridge.

Annual ice cutting campaign at the Johnson plant, Rindge Avenue. *Cambridge Sentinel*
October 11, 1924

In the days before mechanical refrigeration, ice harvested from local ponds was harvested in huge amounts every winter, stored in enormous wooden icehouses, and distributed to households everywhere. The role that Cambridge’s own Nathaniel Wyeth and Frederick Tudor played in developing this industry at Fresh Pond has been extensively documented, but after the City of Cambridge closed the ice houses in 1891 most of Cambridge’s domestic ice – apart from a small amount harvested from the Glacialis, or Artificial Pond, off Concord Avenue – was sourced from Spy Pond in Arlington or from New Hampshire.

Layout of the Johnson Ice Cream plant. Sanborn Map Co., ca. 1929

Cambridge’s defunct ice industry was resuscitated in 1920 under unlikely circumstances. John B. Johnson, a New Hampshire native, had been making ice cream on Columbia Street since 1911. Johnson purchased 225,000 square feet of land off Rindge Avenue in the fall of 1919 and announced that he expected to save up to $15,000 a year by harvesting his own ice from Jerry’s Pit. He immediately erected a small icehouse (a double-walled wooden building insulated with sawdust) and that winter filled it with 3,000 tons of ice. In 1920 he built a two-story ice cream factory adjacent to the icehouse and closed his Columbia Street plant.

J.B. Johnson Ice Cream factory, 361 Rindge Avenue. L-R: factory, icehouse, and stable. *Cambridge Sentinel,* April 1, 1922

The next few winters were suitably cold, and in 1921 and 1922 Johnson was able to harvest 4,000 tons in each season, filling the icehouse with a conveyor belt at the rate of twenty-six 400 lb. cakes per minute over ten working days. After storing surplus ice outside under tarpaulins for a few seasons, Johnson more than doubled his storage capacity in 1925. Not every year offered suitable weather – at least a few weeks of clear, very cold nights and an absence of significant snowfall – but there were substantial harvests in 1930 and 1934, when up to 70 men and several horses brought in cakes 13” thick. 1935 turned out to be the last harvest, as Johnson fell ill and was unable to keep up with mortgage payments. The business continued in other hands until 1938, when the lender foreclosed. The factory buildings were cleared in 1940. The Board of Health denied a subsequent owner permission to use the pond as a dump, and the Dewey & Almy Co. purchased the property in 1942.

Johnson Ice Cream advertisement. *Cambridge Chronicle*, Dec. 14, 1934

Jerry’s Pit has always had a checkered reputation. Brickmaker Jeremiah McCrehan mined clay at the site until one morning in 1860, when, as his son told the story to the Cambridge Chronicle in 1927, he went to work at the pit and found 4’ of water in it. Some operators that tapped underground springs found it profitable to pump their pits dry, but McCrehan abandoned his mining operation instead. Ice was harvested there for domestic use in 1892, but the Board of Health objected, calling the water “entirely unfit for this purpose.”

The pool is a favorite place for such washing as is done by the foreign element who live in the neighborhood; it is a capital place for drowning stray cats and it is often used in this manner by the festive youth who gambol on its banks and who plash about in its shallows in their bare feet; it is, in a way, the cesspool of that neighborhood, and yet during the coming summer a large number of people will dilute their water with ice cut from its surface.
Cambridge Tribune, May 21, 1892

Jerry’s Pit was a de facto neighborhood recreation center, a site for swimming in the summer and skating in the winter in a neighborhood with few such opportunities. J.B. Johnson’s use of the ice in its manufacturing operation was apparently unobjectionable because it was not sold for human consumption. Johnson permitted swimming and skating throughout his ownership, and in 1927 allowed Cambridge’s Recreation Department to improve the facilities and staff the place with lifeguards. In 1943 the Dewey & Almy Co. built a bathhouse and toilet room at its own expense, which the city operated until the Metropolitan District Commission opened the Francis J. McCrehan Pool nearby in 1960.

“It’s a long wait for Linda Lavin, Donna Labo and Tommie Robichaud as they line up at the diving board of Cambridge’s new MDC pool to be the first to try it out.” *Boston Record-American,* July 25, 1960. CHC Photo Morgue Collection

Today’s post was written by CHC Executive Director, Charles Sullivan

Sources

Cambridge Historical Commission files

Cambridge Public Library, Historic Cambridge Newspaper Collection

Sinclair, Jill. Fresh Pond: The History of A Cambridge Landscape. The MIT Press, 2009

Weightman, Gavin. The Frozen Water Trade. HarperCollins, 2001

OINK! OINK! National Bacon Day, December 30

Posted on December 30, 2021January 3, 2022 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

*Cambridge Chronicle* April 28, 1955. Excerpt from advert for Carl’s Super Market

Having earlier posted a piece on the Cambridge Cattle Market in North Cambridge for National Cow Day, we can’t resist writing this piece about a hog market at the opposite end of town, in East Cambridge, on National Bacon Day.

On Monday night October 5, 1891, Cantabrigians all over town could probably have smelled bacon cooking. It was the occasion of a gigantic fire at the J. P. Squire & Co. pork processing plant.

*Cambridge Chronicle* October 10, 1891 (excerpt)

1,500 hogs perished in the blaze, which started in the hog house. Though it was thought to have been started by sparks from a passing locomotive, no cause was ever firmly established. The fire also demolished the refrigerator building where the hogs were slaughtered and dressed. The main building of the complex survived.

JOHN P. SQUIRE (1819-1893)

Portrait of John P. Squire (image via Arlington Historical Society)

John Peter Squire, known as “the pioneer of the pork industry,” was born in Windsor Co., Vermont in 1819. In 1838 at the age of 19, he arrived in Boston and began working at the Faneuil Hall Market for Nathan Robbins, a poultry dealer from Arlington, Mass.

In 1842, Squire started his own firm, Russell & Squire, with partner Francis Russell. The pair continued as general provisions dealers at Faneuil Hall. When that partnership dissolved, Squire kept the business going on his own. Thirteen years later in 1855, he took on two new partners, Hiland Lockwood and Edward D. Kimball, to form the John. P. Squire & Co. Kimball had also been born in Windsor, VT or across the river in Cornish, NH. While still operating at the Faneuil Hall Market, the business expanded from general provisions to specialize in slaughtering and dressing hogs.

John P. Squire’s Faneuil Hall Market stall, ca. 1880s (Image via Picclick.com)

That same year, Squire bought the land in East Cambridge between Gore Street and the Miller’s River and built the J. P. Squire & Co. meat packing and processing plant. The plant ultimately covered 22 acres on either side of the Cambridge/Somerville line.

Detail of Ward 3 on G. M. Hopkins Map, 1873

In 1842, Squire’s operation processed one hog a day. By 1872-73, 394,000 hogs per annum were dispatched at the plant. In 1881, Squire built a large refrigerator with four cooling floors, which could hold 30,000 tons of ice, enabling him to increase production. By 1890, having weathered an employee strike, the plant employed 1,000 men and slaughtered approximately 5,000 hogs per day. The ice house could accommodate 42,000 tons of product. So many of the company’s employees were immigrants that the firm provided English lessons during lunch hours. Squire’s business that year was $15,000,000. It was ranked third in the world of the pork packing businesses. [i]

A chromolithographic view of the John P. Squire and Company’s meatpacking factory on Gore and Medford Streets in East Cambridge, Mass. From Collection of the Boston Athenaeum

The company suffered nearly fatal damage in a fire in 1891. Squire rebuilt it on a grander scale—the plant went through 300 tons of ice daily and had room to hang 10,000 hogs.

WHERE DID ALL THOSE PIGS COME FROM?

Squire’s advertisement for the Arlington brand. CHC collections

Rather than get his hogs from the local abattoirs in Brighton, Squire imported them from the Midwest, delivered to the plant via the Grand Junction Fitchburg Railroads. The Fitchburg railroad also shipped hogs to the “Cattle Market” at Porter Station in North Cambridge. After arriving at the plant on Gore Street, the hogs were housed in sheds until they were processed. By the mid 1870’s, the company was importing 60-120 Carloads of hogs per week. [ii]

Advertisement in Cambridge City Directory, 1890

POLLUTION: PEE-YEW!

Squire’s plant was not the only meatpacking business in the vicinity. Others in Cambridge were Nash, Spaulding & Co., Charles H. North & Co., and Joseph Boynton, with seven more upstream in Somerville.[iii] The amount of blood and offal produced by the slaughterhouses of these three companies was vast. Some of Squire’s offal was processed into fertilizer, but most of it, like the others, was dumped into the Miller’s River, leading to a variety of “pestiferous exhalations”:

“…When they slaughtered [the pigs], what an odor! It all depended on where the wind was blowing. We would say, ‘Oh, they’re killing the poor pigs’’ In those days we didn’[t know enough to complain to the city about the smell.”
—Jennie and Helen Iantosca”[iv]

The situation led to the Board of Selectman in Somerville and the Board of Health in Cambridge to call for hearings to remove the “lard factories and slaughter houses” in the area. Arguments about various solutions went back and forth for several years. Squire himself paid for the construction of a sewer through the Miller River channel, for which he was later reimbursed. Somerville, Cambridge, and the Massachusetts Board of Health finally decided that the best solution, in addition to the sewer, was to drain and fill in the Miller’s River basins.

FIRES

Squire’s plant suffered through no fewer than five significant fires: in 1878, 1891, 1893, 1963, and one hundred years after the first fire, in 1978. The 1891 fire was the most significant during the lifetime of the business. The fire of April 1963, one of the largest of fires in the history of Cambridge, broke out in the then-abandoned factory whose floors were saturated with flammable grease and lard. More than 300 firemen from surrounding communities battled the blaze for five hours before it was brought under control.

Left: billows of smoke pour from the John P. Squire Co. meat packing plant, as fireman battle to bring the blaze under control, (14 April 1963); Right: aftermath (16 April 1983). Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection, Cambridge Historical Commission.

PRIVATE LIFE

In 1843, Squire married Kate Green Orvis (1821-1901), the daughter of Gad Orvis, Squire’s first employer in Vermont in 1836. In 1848, the couple moved to Arlington (then West Cambridge) where they lived and raised their eleven children. John Peter Squire died in 1893. His home in Arlington, at #226 Massachusetts Avenue, still stands.

Squire’s home at 226 Mass Ave in Arlington, ca. 1910-1950 (via Arlington Historical Society)

After Squire’s death, management of the company devolved to his two sons, Frank O. and Fred F. Squire. In the mid-1930’s, Swift Co. (based in Chicago) bought the company and ran it until it closed in the mid-1950s.

J. P. Squire & Co. was an influential presence in the community of East Cambridge for over 100 years. Not only for the size of the physical plant and its odiferous-ness, but because they employed 1,000 local people. In 1867, the company built “Squire’s Court,” a complex of 19 housing units between Lambert and 7^th Streets, for rental by their employees. [v]

View of Squire’s Court, February 9, 1940. CHC collections

Their clock tower, built in 1873, was an iconic landmark in town:

Cupola and clock at Squire’s. CHC collections

*Cambridge Chronicle* October 1, 1953 noting “Squire’s Clock”

“Everybody who wanted a job worked at Squire’s, and they had to wear a white hat, coat, and apron. The men had to be there by 7:00 AM. …I worked in the cafeteria…They had a sliding window from the kitchen to this beautiful dining room for the bigshots…Twelve or fourteen bucks a week, that’s all they paid. The best waitresses in the cafeteria got sixteen dollars.”
—Mabel Mokaba Ruffing[vi]

THE LAST HURRAH: 1978

Even after the gigantic fire of 1963, one vacant, five story brick warehouse was left standing.

On September 1, 1978 it too went up in a blaze.

Image via Somerville Fire Department, Local 76 (http://www.somervillelocal76.org/)

SOURCES

All in the Same Boat: Twentieth-Century Stories of East Cambridge, by Sarah Boyer, Cambridge Historical Commission

History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men. Comp. Under the supervision of D. Hamilton Hurd. (1890).

Cambridge Historical Commission

Cambridge Historical Society: https://historycambridge.org/industry/jpsquire.html

Cambridge Public Library historical newspaper database

Genealogybank.com

Newspapers.com

East Cambridge by Susan E. Maycock. The MIT Press, 1986.

“Tracking Progress: How Somerville Yards — Rail, Stock and Brick — Have Shaped Union Square” Walking Tour researched & led by Ed Gordon, President of the Victorian Society in America, New England Chapter Sunday, September 25, 2016 Co-sponsored by the Somerville Arts Council and the Somerville Historic Preservation Commission.

[i] History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men. Compiled under the supervision of D. Hamilton Hurd. (1890

[ii] Cambridge Chronicle December 5, 1874

[iii] East Cambridge by Susan E. Maycock (The MIT Press, 1986).

[iv] All in the Same Boat: Twentieth-Century Stories of East Cambridge, by Sarah Boyer, Cambridge Historical Commission

[v] Survey of Architectural History in Cambridge: East Cambridge. Revised edition by Susan E. Maycock.

[vi] All in the Same Boat: Twentieth-Century Stories of East Cambridge, by Sarah Boyer, Cambridge Historical Commission

A Pickle Post

Posted on November 14, 2021November 18, 2021 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

In Honor of National Pickle Day, established by the Pickle Packers Association in 1949

Final stanza: poem in *New England Farmer* May 8, 1824

The word “pickle” in English comes to us from the Dutch pekel or northern German pókel, meaning “salt” or “brine.” Pickles have been around for at least 4,000 years. Some accounts say they are native to India, others that they were invented in Mesopotamia. They made their debut in the Americas via Christopher Columbus. He (or someone) had figured out that brine-soaked pickles had the advantage of preventing scurvy on long voyages. Cleopatra liked them. So did Napoleon. So do we, if for no other reason than “pickle” is a fun word to say.

PICKLE FACTORIES IN CAMBRIDGE:

The Harvard Pickle Works, Inc., located at 172 Thorndike Street.

Harvard Brand Pure Cider Vinegar bottle, ca. 1930s. (Cambridge Historical Commission Objects Collection)

Detail: 1930 Cambridge Bromley Map showing Harvard Pickle Works

170-174 Thorndike Street at Eighth St. Photograph 1944. CHC collections.

Fickle Pickle fact: In 2020 Americans were eating 20 billion pickles a year.

H.J. Heinz & Co. Warehouse, located at 201 Vassar Street.

H.J. Heinz an Co. was founded in 1869 in Pittsburgh, PA by Henry John Heinz, the “Pickle King”. In 1915, the company built a plant at 201 Vassar Street in Cambridge. In 1968, the property was sold to MIT.

H. J. Heinz pickle lapel pin via Heinz History Center Shop

Detail: 1930 Cambridge Bromley Map showing 201 Vassar St. (Heinz Warehouse)

Exterior view of 201 Vassar Street, photographed by Christopher Hail (Sept 1984)

Fickle Pickle fact: In 2018 someone calculated if each pickle sold in America that year were about 6” long it would take 2.4 million pickles to get to the moon.

Advert from the *Cambridge Chronicle* January 21, 1954. Two jars for only 49 cents!

Sanborn, Parker & Co., a Boston pickle concern with a manufacturing plant in East Cambridge.

Fickle Pickle fact: During WWII 40% of all pickle production was allocated to the ration kits of the armed forces.

ADVICE FOR PICKLERS

*Cambridge Chronicle* September 30, 1847

Fickle Pickle fact: pickle crunches can be heard from ten paces away.

It wasn’t just cucumbers that were pickled. Here is a “Receipt” for pickled peaches:

*Cambridge Chronicle* September 16, 1847

“Receipts” for what we now call “recipes” was the usual term through much of the 18th century. In the 19th century, the term “recipes” outpaced “receipts” although both words can still be found in usage until the early 20th century.

NOT JUST FOR CRUNCHING: OTHER USES FOR PICKLES AND PICKLE JUICE

We now know that because of its high sodium content, sports players often drink pickle juice to replace what they used in sweating. Pickle juice also stimulates a “neurological reflex that prevents muscles from cramping.” But did you know that it is effective at putting out fires?

VINEGAR

Of course, you can’t talk about pickles without talking about vinegar. One of the largest purveyors of vinegar in Cambridge was Joseph A. Holmes & Co:

In the 1880s, vinegar became a hotter topic than you might imagine. In 1879, Congress passed the “Whiskey Vinegar Law.” While aimed at prohibiting the adulteration of foodstuffs (in part by stating that all vinegar had to contain at least 5% acidity), it also allowed whiskey distillers to use whiskey in the manufacture of alcoholic vapor vinegar, which they called “white wine vinegar.”

A big complicated hoo-ha ensued, involving charges of illicit distilling, food adulteration, tax avoidance and undercutting the apple cider market, and it all got tangled up with a regional Eastern vs Western issue. Most “whiskey vinegar” was produced in the west, and the “alcoholic vapor” process was cheaper. To combat what they saw as undercutting the market for their apple cider vinegar, the eastern apple growers focused on the idea that the law allowed anybody to open a “vinegar distillery” which, while cranking out vinegar, would also be able to crank out barrels of nefarious illicit whiskey without taxation.

The result of the controversy caused Cambridge (and other cities) to create the position of “Inspector of Vinegar,” a job often combined with the “Inspector of Milk.” It is not clear if the law was ever repealed.

THE MANY USES OF VINEGAR

Now that you know more about the vinegar crises than you ever thought you would need, here are some entertaining articles about the uses of vinegar.

To prevent smoking lamps…

As a teeth-cleaning solution…

As a wart remover…

As fascinating entertainment…

As a cure for poisonous wounds…

MORE FICKLE PICKLE FACTS FROM THE INTERNET

You want to avoid being in “de pekel zitten” (Dutch) if you can avoid it. It literally translates as sitting in the pickle, and has come to mean just plan ole drunk.

But you can also be “in a pickle” if you are in a quandary. Shakespeare used the phrase in The Tempest when Alsono asks: “How camest thou in this pickle?” and Trincuclo responds “I have been in such a pickle since I saw you last that, I fear me, will never out of my bones.” Poor Trinculo meant he had been drunk, but eventually the phrase came to mean being in a tricky situation, or a quandary.

Nutritional facts: Pickles provide 20% of the daily recommended amount of vitamin K, which helps your blood clot, 6% of the calcium adults need for strong bones, teeth and healthy nerves, and
6% of your daily requirement of potassium, which also helps your nervous system.

Pickleball, a sort of paddle tennis game, was founded in 1965. Its creators called it “pickleball” in recognition of the “pickle boat” – – a hodge-podge thrown together crew in in crew races. And that reference, in turn, was to the last boat in English yacht races which was called the “fisher,” because that boat, coming in last, would stop along the way to fish for herring which were then – – you’ve got it – – pickled.

Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox.

Sources
https://www.history.com/news/pickles-history-timeline
https://www.mtolivepickles.com
https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2010/06/09/snap-crunch-that-s-a-pickle/
Middlesex South Registry of Deeds
Cambridge Public Library: Digitized Newspapers
https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/health-benefits-pickles
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/408287/recipe-vs-receiptps:
https://medium.com/@specialisedgeneralist/
https: //www.mtolivepickles.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/G2-3-Pickles-Are-Popular.pdf
https://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/history-pickles/

Historic Building: 299 Concord Avenue

Posted on August 13, 2021December 4, 2023 by Meta Partenheimer

It’s time for a historic building spotlight! We are featuring the former filling station at the corner of Concord Avenue and Walden Street in North Cambridge. Today, the building has a whole new look.

Concord Avenue near the corner of Walden Street, facing east. September 6, 1933.

In the early twentieth century, Concord Avenue served as a main transportation route, though the area had evolved from its early rural roots to a more suburban character. The advent of the automobile as a mode of transportation for the average person opened up this area to further residential development. Fresh Pond and Kingsley Park were also major draws for day-trippers taking a drive into the countryside. With people and cars came the need for fueling stations. The gasoline station at 299 Concord Avenue was one of 8 gas stations to be built along Concord Avenue between 1905 and 1930.

Rotogravure originally printed in the March 8, 1925 edition of the *Boston Traveler* as part of the series “Colonial Filling Stations of Boston.”

As an example of an early gas station, the Colonial Filling Station at 299 Concord Ave was built in 1924 for $7,000. The building was designed in the Colonial Revival style and executed by Boston-based consulting engineer Allen Hubbard. Born in 1860, Hubbard spent his early life in Westfield, Mass and later became the town’s first major league baseball player. Hubbard attended Yale to obtain an engineering degree and became the college’s baseball team captain. Soon after his graduation in 1883, Hubbard left his baseball career behind and worked as a bookkeeper and engineer for contractors in Boston before forming a business partnership with Hollis French in 1898. Throughout his career, Hubbard would consult on various large-scale engineering projects, including the Boston Public Library.

Allen Hubbard in his Yale catcher’s uniform (via adonisterry.tripod.com)

Hubbard’s design for the hip-roofed structure was elaborately detailed with dentil moldings, a Federal-style doorway with elliptical fan light and side lights, round-arched windows with lancet-arched muntins, red roofing shingles, and a wood balustrade at the roof peak. The masonry detail further embellished the station, with arched brickwork over the windows and a soldier course of bricks at the base, topped by a course of headers. A large sign band filled the space between the doorway and the cornice.

299 Concord Ave ca. 1973-74. Photograph by Richard Cheek.

The station went through a series of owners over the decades. A garage bay for automobile servicing was added in 1938. When the building was surveyed by the CHC in 1973, it was in nearly original condition and one of the oldest surviving of its kind in Cambridge. By 1978, gasoline services had ceased, and the building was converted to office use. Then-owner Cambridge Alternative Power Co., Inc. (CAPCO) undertook major alterations to and built an addition. Subsequent projects included the construction of a windmill and solar greenhouse.

299 Concord Ave in October 1982. Photograph by CHC staff.

In 2003, the CHC received an application to demolish the former gas station and its additions to make way for new construction. Rather than demolish the structure, an updated proposal was submitted in which the new design would preserve the original fabric of the façade to the fullest extent possible.

Today, the original filling station façade can be seen from Concord Ave.

View north from Concord Ave via Google Street View (October 2017)

SOURCES

“1883 Yale Baseball Captain Added to the Bulldog Club Posthumously” article by Dan Genovese
(The Yale Newsletter, Winter 2005)
Cambridge Public Library Online Newspaper Database
CHC survey files

National Cow Appreciation Day

Posted on July 13, 2021July 16, 2021 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

Imagine this: The year is 1850, and you are standing at the current intersection of Somerville and Massachusetts avenues at Porter Square, looking toward West Cambridge (now Arlington). To your left are acres of cattle and sheep pens. There is a cacophony of bellows, snorts, and grunts along with mooing and bleating. At the weekly Wednesday Cambridge Cattle Market, you can inspect up to 2,500 cattle and sheep for sale. Think of the sounds. Think of the manure!

In the early 1800s, cattle drovers en route to Boston from Maine, New Hampshire, and western Massachusetts would stop near Union Square (now called Porter Square) in Cambridge to water themselves at the Davenport Tavern and their cattle at feed lots across the street. In 1833 Sylvester Edson of Vermont bought the pens, erected a slaughterhouse, and built a hotel adjacent to the cattle market. In 1837 the hotel was purchased by Zachariah B. Porter (1797-1864, also a Vermont native), who already had a successful hotel across the Charles at the Brighton Cattle Yards. Of course, he renamed the hotel the Porter House, from which we derive the name “Porter Square” and, as some attest, the “Porterhouse steak.”

The cattle market, hotel, and associated businesses soon created the need for a local bank. In the early 1850s, George Meacham and others established the Cattle Market Bank. Meacham was a real estate investor, North Cambridge landowner, and prominent cattle broker. He became a director and subsequently president of the bank.

Some cattle were driven over roads from New Hampshire or Vermont in droves of 100 to 200 at a time. In 1903 Charles O. Stickney recalled:

“…as many as 4000 head on the road between Exeter, N. H. and Cambridge. It was no uncommon sight to see from 100 to 200 cattle in a drove, and the road packed with droves half a mile or more. Years ago full one-half of the drovers who went to Brighton and Cambridge were Maine men. New Hampshire also had a large number of drovers…”
Cambridge Tribune March 7, 1903

Most of the cattle transported to Cambridge arrived in railcars over the Fitchburg and Vermont Central Railroads and were off-loaded at what became known as Porter’s Station:

Cambridge’s first railroad station, built by the Fitchburg Railroad in 1844; second story added later. Photo ca. 1865.

In September of 1849, after it had been in business for just five weeks, the Cambridge Chronicle described Porter’s operation, noting in particular the number of cattle cars that pulled up at the station: a total of 168!

*Cambridge Chronicle* September 20, 1849

Market Prices: *Cambridge Chronicle* October 4, 1849. “Beeves” was a term used for any cow, steer, or ox raised for its meat.

Two months later, the paper wrote admiringly of a remarkable 3,700 lb. ox for sale:

Some cattle arrived at the Medford station via the Northern, Nashua, and Lowell railroads. Cattle drovers then herded them the two miles to the Cambridge Cattle Market.

Winslow Homer: *Cambridge Cattle Market*. 1859, wood engraving. *Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion*, edited by Maturin Murray Ballou. p. 8.

The one-year anniversary of the Market was big news. On October 23, 1850, the Boston Evening Transcript reported that there were “no less than three thousand five hundred head of cattle, and eight thousand sheep, while at the dinner table sat six hundred market-men.” The anniversary dinner was free—on the house at Porter’s Hotel. In just one year, the cattle market had grown from eight acres to fourteen and from 50 cattle pens to 188.

Of course, maintaining sanitary conditions and eliminating disease amongst the cattle was crucial. The notice below outlined the rules and regulations the cattle market. (Note that “no Cattle shall be killed after 6 o’clock in the afternoon.”)

*Cambridge Chronicle* September 12, 1868

“Milt’” refers to the cattle’s spleen.

THE DEMISE OF THE MARKET

Cambridge’s population was growing and with it the need for more housing. Around 1870 the value of real estate in North Cambridge started to increase rapidly. Rising property values and the need for a more streamlined transportation route to the Boston market, not to mention the odiferous and noisy nuisance of the stockyard and its rowdy drovers, pushed the Cambridge market’s move to the newly constructed “Union Cattle Market” in Watertown near the Arsenal. The wood of the sheds and pen railings at Cambridge were sold for firewood and Porter and George Meacham’s land divided into housing lots.

The Cambridge City Directory of 1872 still included the cattle market on its fold-out map:

THE HOTEL

Following Edson, the hotel’s original owner, the hotel changed hands and names several times (Cattle Market Hotel and Cattle Fair Hotel) before Zachariah B. Porter renamed it the Porter House Hotel, or Porter’s Hotel.

Like the Davenport Tavern before it, Porter’s Hotel was remembered fondly by drovers, cattle brokers, and other passers-by. Again, the recollections of Charles O. Stickney:

Zachariah Porter’s well-known hospitality and delicious menu attracted more customers than just cattle men. His dance hall was frequently used for soirees and his large dining hall for celebratory occasions. Harvard students and prosperous Cantabrigians began dining at the hotel. Many of them were coming for a singular specialty.

THE PORTERHOUSE STEAK

It is generally believed that the name “Porterhouse Steak” derived from Porter’s establishment, though occasionally others served up alternative stories. In 1923 a daughter of Amos Pike, who had managed the hotel, and who had herself known the cook, Mary Harvey, gave an interview in which she attempted to end the debate. However, the anonymous author of this article was unconvinced.

THE DEMISE OF THE HOTEL

After Zachariah Porter’s departure, the hotel had several owners: Amos Pike, Francis Locke, Davis Locke, and Edgar I. D. Houck, who took it over in 1894, and his widow, Cora Houck. After the turn of the century, the business began a downhill slide. The combination of license irregularities and the increasing value of the real estate led to its ultimate demise.

*Cambridge Chronicle* September 15, 1900

Houck’s case went to trial, but he was proven not guilty.

*Cambridge Chronicle* March 7, 1903 (excerpt)

In 1907, Brooks & Conley moved the hotel to the rear of the property and erected a row of stores directly on North (Massachusetts) Avenue. The hotel finally met its end in 1909.

*Cambridge Chronicle* September 18, 1909

Today, all that is left of the thriving old cattle market is the Cattle Pass under Walden Street Bridge. Built in 1857 as a pathway for cattle from the freight cars to the stockyards, it was renovated in 2007-2008.

Union Square was renamed Porter Square in 1899. The champions of the market, Zachariah B. Porter and George A. Meacham, are both buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery

Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox.

SOURCES
Porter Square Neighbor’s Association
Cambridge Historical Commission
Genealogy Bank
Newspapers.com
Cambridge Public Library digitized newspaper collection

Before There Were Supermarkets: Part 2

Posted on May 26, 2021 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

Arthur H. Smith (1861-1943)

With his acquisition of Fred Row’s Pleasant Street market in 1885, Arthur Smith became a giant in further revolutionizing grocery shopping in Cambridge.

Like Fred Row, Smith was an émigré from England. Born in London in 1861, he emigrated to the U. S. as a boy in 1870, the year before his fellow Englishman, the teenaged Row. Perhaps because of the “English connection,” Smith briefly worked for Row during the late 1870’s. He then went on to work at other grocers, and established himself well enough that in 1886, at the age of 25, he bought Row’s Pleasant Street Market. The gumption of these two emigres to have bought businesses before they were 25 years old is remarkable—and a familiar immigrant story.

Smith seems to have learned a few things about advertising from his previous employer, changing the name to the impressive Mammoth Market. He printed a proclamation supporting Massachusetts Governor designating November 27, 1890 as a Thanksgiving holiday.

In 1891, Smith sold the Mammoth Market and moved to a larger location on Main Street in Central Square. He intended to build a two-story building with a market on the ground floor and offices on the second floor. But plans were delayed and changed, and it wasn’t until 1895 that he opened “Smith’s Manhattan Market” at 602-614 Main Street. Story has it that It was named “the great Manhattan Market on 125th Street [in] Harlem” (Cambridge Chronicle, Jan. 31, 1891). His advertising emphasized modern conveniences such a big “hygenic” refrigerators, a long- distance telephone on the premises and a “neat little room for ladies to sit in…”

Manhattan Market 1909. (Cambridge Historical Commission)

Smith’s particular innovation in marketing was to include under one roof individual vendors for the usual grocery goods—meat, fruit & vegetables, canned goods, and baked goods. He also sold kitchen implements, and, believe it or not, music and musical instruments. There was even a piano available for “customers to try out the sheet music” before purchasing. An all-day lunch counter was an added attraction. The position of the individual vendors eventually morphed into departments under the same store management. The “Superb and Elegant” Manhattan Market was a big step toward the idea of what we today call a “Supermarket.”

Historically, the first supermarket as we know it today was the Piggly Wiggly, opened in Memphis, Tennessee in 1916. Customers were able to load items into their baskets (provided by the store) themselves and brought them to a central check-out counter. The Manhattan followed this and all subsequent trends in the management of grocery stores.

Excerpt: *Cambridge Tribune* August 31, 1895

The fine print:

After a very brilliant and successful reception, which was attended by thousands who spike in the highest terms of the beauty and completeness of its arrangements, has passed through a week of business which far exceeded our fondest hopes. It may be thought that because of its magnificence the prices may be on an equally magnificent scale. The Manhattan will entirely disabuse your mind of any such erroneous idea. The proof of the pudding is in the eating; so also the proof of the price is in the purchase…The Manhattan will give measure for measure and dollar for dollar as much as can be obtained anywhere.

Excerpt: *Cambridge Chronicle* September 11, 1897

Smith went on to open other stores in the Boston area, as well as a chain of “five and ten-cent” grocery stores. In 1929 the store became a part of Upham’s Corner Market. Smith soon stepped down from active management of the store in and went on to create United Markets, Inc.

Under changes in management and names, a grocery store remained at the site of the old Manhattan Market until at least 1999.

596-600 Mass. Ave. (left), 602-614 Mass. Ave. in 2019 (right) in 2019
(Google Street view)

Stay tuned for the final installment of our series on supermarkets!

Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox.

Sources:

Cambridge City Directory and Newspapers

Wikipedia

Nationaldaycalendar.com

https://grocershall.co.uk/the-company/history/

Merriam Webster’s Dictionary

https://nationaldaycalendar.com/7-inventions-that-made-grocery-shopping-easier/

https://time.com/4480303/supermarkets-history/items at the checkout

Before There Were Supermarkets: Part 1

Posted on May 13, 2021June 28, 2021 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

These days we don’t think twice about going to the supermarket and picking up all of our groceries in one place. But back in the 1800’s, before there were supermarkets, grocery shopping required making stops at a variety of small, specialized markets. For instance, you might have visited:

Cyrus Fellows for fish and oysters: Fellows was born in New Hampshire in 1808. As a young man he walked the 50 miles to Gloucester, Massachusetts, for work. He became a stage driver and wound up in the fish business. It is thought he established one of the first fish markets in Cambridge. He died at age 93 in 1902.

Or stopped by William E. Fyfe’s shop for baked goods. The census of 1860 lists him as a “cracker peddler.”

Calvin Gove was well known for his meats, as was Andrew A. Ward. In 1860 Ward announced home delivery service, running “a wagon to the houses of individuals carrying meats of all kinds … In 1877 the two became partners and purchased a stall at Faneuil Hall Market.

Poultry: Fred Richardson on River Street was well stocked with a variety of edible birds:

*Cambridge Chronicle* September 15, 1883

Dairy: No need to worry that Munroe & Evans would run out of butter before you could get there. “Firkin” refers to the wooden tub in which the producers shipped their butter.

The word “grocer” comes to us via the medieval Latin “grossarius” and French “grossier,” finally landing in English as “grocer.” When the “Company of Grocers of London” was created in 1376 the term became more widespread. Eventually a grocer meant anyone who sold basic foodstuffs such as flour, sugar, coffee, tea, etc. (https://grocershall.co.uk/the-company/history)

Of the 84 names listed under “Grocer” or “Provisioner” in the 1866 Cambridge City Directory, 18 were on Main street or on a street corner “near” main Street. The Directory also listed 11 bakeries.

Apart from their particular specialization, some of these many stores also did sell other food stuffs. Over time, meat markets increasingly combined with greengrocers, fruit markets, bakeries, fish markets, etc., leading to the ultimate development of the “supermarket.”

Two of the most influential grocer/provisioners in 19th century Cambridge whose markets led the way were Fred J. Row and Arthur H. Smith.

Frederick “Fred” J. Row (1853-1910)

Row was born in Plymouth, England, in 1853. In 1871, at age 18 he emigrated to Boston.

Before appearing in the Cambridge City Directory in 1877 as a “provisioner” at 80 Pleasant Street, he had briefly been a bookkeeper. His obituary states that he “originated” the Pleasant Street Market in 1875–which means he was only 22 or 23 years old at the time.

Row lived across the street from the store. He ran it until 1885, when he sold it to a former employee (Arthur H. Smith, see the forthcoming Part 2 of this post) and moved to larger space on Main Street.

Modern image of 80 Pleasant street, corner of Chalk St. (Google street view)

Row’s particular innovation in the grocery business was his savvy advertising. If there ever was a self-promoter, he was it. He even once referred to himself as a “hustler.” The Cambridge Chronicle noted: “Mr. Row is credited with having an abundance of ‘snap’ and his modern and liberal policy has effected a revolution in the local trade.” (April 19, 1884).

Advertisement in the *Cambridge Chronicle* November 23, 1878

Customer service was key. The advertisement reads:

“We shall have a bulletin board in front of our store giving the market prices every day, as sometimes prices change, and our customers may rely on getting the benefit of the market. All orders entrusted to our care will receive prompt attention, and will be charged at the market price on the day the goods are bought.”

His advertisements were witty, at times poetic, and at times screaming from the pages. A couple of his first ditties appeared in 1879:

Row’s advertisements were conversational. They had the effect of acknowledging the customer and speaking directly to them in a way that other advertisers did not. The paper may have printed his name incorrectly in the advert below, but what other market operator would dream up the idea of announcing that “The Country is Safe!” because of himself?

Business boomed at #80 Pleasant Street. In 1885, Row sold the market to Alfred H. Smith, who had worked for him as a boy. (More on Arthur H. Smith in the next post)

Fred established his new market at #423 (subsequently #818) Main Street, and named it the “Middlesex Market.”

After about three years, Row decided it was not only the Middlesex Market, but the “FAMOUS Middlesex Market” as in the ad below from 1888. It also features Arthur Ward, whom Row had brought on board in 1878, and made vice president of the company in 1888. In 1892, Row opened a second store at 11 Prospect Street, and put Ward in charge of managing it.

Ward, along with Row (and Smith), was featured in an article in the Cambridge Chronicle on “Men of Cambridge Markets,” (April 9, 1893):

They remained in business together until 1894 when Arthur departed to start his own business, “Ward’s Market, later Ward’s Central Sq. Market” at the corner of Pearl and Main Street (566 Main Street).

Back to Fred’s advertising: He took advantage of any public events to tie them to his store – the advent of electric cars, electric lights, and a presidential election. Below is a fun selection from over the years:

A “public exhibition” of his stock under the “Absolutely Searching Electric Light”:

Cambridge Chronicle June 21, 1890: “It goes without saying, that a Yankee is, or thinks he is, the smartest, brightest and keenest specimen of the Genus Homo” (that is Latin for Man) …

And here we have a description of the “Looks of Astonishment” that patrons displayed upon first seeing the store as he described the “activity, life and animation” they saw.

Fred Row closed up shop at the Middlesex Market in 1901. He briefly opened the Columbian Market at # 1½ Austin Street. He also managed a store on River street, but after the Columbian Market, he never again actually owned a grocery store. Fred Row succumbed to typhoid in 1910 at the age of 57.

Stay tuned for our next installment to learn more about Arthur Smith and the evolution of supermarkets!

Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox.

Sources:

Cambridge City Directory and Newspapers

Wikipedia

Nationaldaycalendar.com

https://grocershall.co.uk/the-company/history/

Merriam Webster’s Dictionary

https://nationaldaycalendar.com/7-inventions-that-made-grocery-shopping-easier/

https://time.com/4480303/supermarkets-history/items at the checkout

National Inventor’s Day

Posted on February 11, 2021February 12, 2021 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

DEWEY AND ALMY CHEMICAL CO.

Today we are celebrating Inventor’s Day with a look at two Cambridge inventors who founded the Dewey & Almy Chemical Co. on Harvey Street in North Cambridge: Bradley Dewey and Charles Almy.

Dewey and Almy met on their first day as freshman at Harvard in 1905. They remained friends throughout their years at Harvard and then at MIT, where they studied chemical engineering. After graduation, they went their separate ways until WWI found them assigned to the Chemical Warfare Service. There, both holding the rank of Colonel, they helped supervise the development and production of gas masks. Dewey was in charge of the Gas Production Defense Division, for which he received the Army Distinguished Service medal. Discharged from the army in 1919, the two men went into business together with an aim to provide chemical research that would lead to useful products for industry.

BRADLEY DEWEY

Bradley Dewey was born in Vermont in 1887, the son of Davis Rich Dewey (who became a Professor of Economics at MIT) and Mary Cornelia Hopkins. He received his Harvard B.A. (cum laude) in 1908 then went on to MIT, receiving his second bachelor’s degree, this time in chemical engineering, in 1909. After MIT and until the start of WWI, he worked for the American and Tin Plate company and U.S. Steel.

CHARLES ALMY

Charles Almy was born in 1888 to the Cambridge judge Charles Almy and Mary Ann Cummings. After receiving his A.B. in chemical engineering from Harvard in 1908, he became a research assistant in applied chemistry at MIT. He received his degree in chemical engineering from MIT in 1910. Following graduation, he worked for the American Vulcanized Fibre Co. of Wilmington, Delaware, and the Virginia Red Oil Products Corporation in Baltimore. After establishing Dewey & Almy, he moved away the chemical engineering aspects of the company to become its sales manager. He was described as “a quiet young man with a subdued but absorbing enthusiasm for his business.”

THE DEWEY & ALMY CHEMICAL COMPANY

Their efforts began in a tin shack at 235 Harvey Street in North Cambridge and, literally, at Dewey’s mother’s kitchen stove at 2 Berkeley Street.

Presaging future concerns about the site, neighbors were worried about the possible stink of “rendering grease” and reclaimed rubber, as well as acid production and “similar offensive operations” on the site. (Cambridge Chronicle, 16 August 1919)

Dewey & Almy developed gas masks, synthetic rubber, and rubber-based products, as well as fishing line, latex sealants, plastic bags, and adhesives. During their first decade, the chief product was a water-based compound useful for sealing tin cans and affixing their labels:

Gold Seal Tin Paste: Advertisement from *Canning Age*, 1922

Later, recognizing the needs of the growing frozen foods industry, they developed latex films used for packaging grocery products. A 1939 Life Magazine featured a demonstration of “Cry-O-Vac,” their protective packaging for meats:

“Demonstration of Cryovac Latex Balloon,
Developed by Dewey and Almy Chemical Co. of Cambridge, Massachusetts”

Another invention was an adhesive for gluing cork to the inside of bottle caps. One of their biggest hits was “Grippt,” which they advertised as “One adhesive for every use.” Grippit “cannot wrinkle paper” and is “clean … everlasting.” Smears and excess product “are easily cleaned off with the fingers without soiling them” (Cambridge Sentinel 9 April 1921).

Other products included:

“Multibestos” railroad car brake linings. (Multibestos is a form of asbestos.)

Model train advertising Multibestos (image from eBay)

1943 Signal Corps, U. S. Army Balloon M-278A

U.S. Army Signal Corps balloon via Ehive

“Darex” meteorological balloons

And then, amid all the chemical dispersants, latex and rubber vulcanizing cement, and safe-food packaging, came “Thickit” for use in whipping cream!

Advertisement from *American Stationer And Office Management*, 1921

JERRY’S PIT

In 1942 Dewey & Almy purchased a lot immediately adjacent to Jerry’s Pit. Originally a 19th century clay pit for area brickworks (and probably named for the owner of the pit), the area had become a popular swimming hole. The following year the company donated $5,000 to the city to build bathhouses and toilets on the site, which it agreed to manage. This was no doubt in part to assuage community concerns over possible contaminants from the company. After the W.R. Grace Co. bought Dewey & Almy, these concerns eventually led to the closing of the swimming hole in 1961.

Jerry’s Pond, aka “Jerry’s Pit,” in the 1950s. Near Alewife. (CHC photo)

In 1944 Dewey & Almy received its second Army-Navy Production Award for meritorious services. Charles Almy noted, “This is a tribute to the men and women of our Cambridge plant…I am proud of their determined efforts.”

Preferred Stock of the Dewey and Almy Company dated 20 April 1945.

AFTERWARD

Dewey & Almy opened plants around the world, and the list of its inventions and products is long. In 1954 it was purchased by the W.R. Grace company, which expanded the site to include properties on Whittemore Avenue. After Grace emerged from bankruptcy in 2014, it spun off a separate company, GCP Applied Technologies, which now occupies the site.

During WWII, Bradley Dewey had become Federal Rubber Administrator. He received the medal of the Society of the Chemical Industry in 1944 and was awarded several honorary doctor degrees. He retired as president of Dewey & Almy in 1952 and became chair of the Board of Directors. In the mid-1950s, he formed the Bradley Container Corp., a joint venture with Olin Mathiesen for producing plastic food containers. He sold out to the American Can Company three years later. While in Cambridge he had served two terms on the Cambridge School Committee. He moved to Concord, New Hampshire, in 1968 and died there in 1974 at the age of 98.

Charles Almy died in 1954 at the age of 65. He had been a civic leader in Cambridge, on the Advisory Council of the Cambridge Civic Association, and a Trustee of the Foundation for Vision. He was a director of the Cambridge Trust Co; Vice President of the Cambridge Savings Bank; and President of the Corporation of the Brown & Nichols School, his alma mater. After his death, the Cambridge City Council passed a resolution “attesting to the inspiration and support which he brought to the public officials of Cambridge and to his contributions to the progress which the city has attained …”

Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer, Kathleen Fox.

SOURCES

Cambridge Library digital newspapers online

American Stationer and Office Management Vol. 88, 1921

Cambridge Sentinel 11 June 1921

Canning Age, Vol. 3 1922

Newspapers.com

Genealogybank.com

Small Business Feature: Abroad Modern

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Meta Partenheimer

During these trying times for our community, we are committed to helping local businesses. To do our part, every week in May we have been highlighting locally-owned small businesses right here in Cambridge! Today, we will spotlight Abroad Modern along with the history of the building in which the shop is located at 260 Concord Avenue in Northwest Cambridge.

Concord Ave 260_001 — 260 Concord Ave, 4 August 1985. Photographer: Frank J. O’Reilly.

Although the storefront is closed, Abroad Modern is open for online business, and its founder is even offering free gloved-hand delivery to locals! “Modern utility sourced globally” is how owner and founder, Greer Goodman describes the products, sourced from India, offered in her shop. Goodman’s passion for her entrepreneurial goals is apparent: “…I started this business to help others, to partner with people around the globe and make space for a cultural awareness that will hopefully, in tiny but meaningful ways, make the world smaller and better.”

View the website here: https://www.abroadmodern.com/

The history of the building from which Abroad Modern is operated is as unique as the store itself. The property, which contains 360 square feet, is a remnant of a larger property that was divided when Appleton Street was laid out the it in 1871. The ‘heater piece’ or ‘gore’ as these leftovers were known, shows up in city atlases in 1894 as the property of Francis J. O’Reilly. In 1908, O’Reilly obtained a building permit to put up a one-story wood-frame store, 8′ wide on Concord Avenue, 30′ deep along Appleton Street, 4′ wide at the back, and 14′ high.

Concord Ave 260_survey — 260 Concord Ave, ca. late 1960s. CHC Survey.

The 1910 Cambridge Directory lists shoemaker Cosimo Carfagno as the occupant at 260 Concord. Carfagno operated his business from the small building until at least 1931, his last directory listing. The next directory, in 1937, lists the property as vacant and according to directories, remained so until at least 1972.

1930_bromley — Detail of 1930 Cambridge Bromley Atlas.

The adjoining property to the east, once the house and land of ice dealer H.H. Eames, was subdivided by his heirs in about 1900 into four house lots. Andrew N. Lewis, a carpenter, built houses on each lot, including the present house at 256 Concord Avenue once owned by Boston-based contractor Garrett Lambert.

Concord Ave 256-260 — 256-260 Concord Avenue, 20 August 1983. Photographer unknown.

The neighborhood lore is that this is a ‘spite’ or ‘grudge’ building. This may be a reasonable inference from the store’s proximity to 256 Concord Avenue, since one can easily imagine O’Reilly buying this otherwise useless property with the intent of selling it to the eventual abutter, but there is no documentary evidence to support this. In the absence of zoning, which was not adopted until 1926, many property owners were quick to put waste ground to any productive use, and it is equally logical that this structure was built by O’Reilly specifically for Carfagno to occupy as a shoe repair shop.

Concord Ave 260_002 — 260 Concord Avenue as seen from Appleton Street, 13 August 1983. Photographer unknown.

We hope you enjoyed today’s post, and we also hope you take time to explore the small businesses in your neighborhood!

Sources:

Cambridge Historical Commission survey file: 260 Concord Avenue

http://www.abroadmodern.com/pages/our-journey